Throughout the back-and-forth on the garage, both advocates and critics of the plan pointed to the city's planning board as another step that would shape the final project. So it's worth watching how the project is adjusted (or not) by the planning board process. It's one of the last hurdles before construction starts. (When the project plans were introduced last year, the development team indicated it had hoped to have the site demolished by now.)

The Park South redevelopment is an ambitious, unusual plan. It aims to completely clear two whole blocks adjacent to Albany Med and rebuild with a collection of buildings that would include two six-story mixed-used buildings on New Scotland Ave, a medical office building, the parking garage, and 268 residential units. It could fundamentally transform the neighborhood, the sort of project that doesn't come along very often.

Comments

Goin' down to Park South, gonna have myself a time
Parking garages everywhere, weekday swarms of dull Caucasians
Goin' down to Park South, it's colonoscopy time
Empty sidewalks every night, you don't really miss Quintessence
Goin' down to Park South, Panera sandwiches are fine
Come on down to Park South, it's very uninspired.

I must say I am shocked people are against more parking in the area. The parking around there is usually a nightmare and bringing more spaces to deal with more businesses and residents makes sense to me. This kind of reaction is why much of downtown albany is stuck in the 50s.

Dan with more parking we won't have Albany, we'll have Wolf Rd in Colonie. You can't say that you want to decrease congestion, and improve air quality, and then all 800 parking spaces in one structure alone.

Anybody know what's proposed for the two 6 story mixed-use buildings? More medical office space or something different? It seem like the city defines mixed-use as offices and parking garages and nothing else.

@dan and @tim Mac has several lots, recently built two garages that aren't at capacity, and plans to create even more surface parking in addition to the plan. It's not about capacity, it's about managing demand. Most employees take free street spots already. Take a tour of South lake on a weekday and compare to nights and weekends. Without a permit or very limited time system, the garage won't affect on street demand.

The office building is not part of the hospital. It's a mix of associates an non affiliated practices. 60,000 sq feet of the office building is for the medical college. The general spaces per sq foot formula that Columbia is using is out of whack. The neighborhood is hopeful that students and employees will choose to live nearby. Otherwise what's the economic benefit to provide tax incentives? What's the economic benefit of an 800 car garage that serves medical offices? Turning the neighborhood into a pass through does nothing to benefit existing residential and commercial tax base. That's the type of planning from the 50s that's failed us.

I'm not saying this development is unwelcome. I live a block away it's needed. But the garage at this scale is completely innapropriate.

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Recent Comments

The state of our roads makes it too dangerous for me to want to use my bike to go to work. It's scary enough to walk/jog around town and have people fly through stop signs/lights when I'm using intersections... and on a bike it's that much worse if you attempt to bike legally in the street. This would be a great start to making our community more safe in general.
We have to start somewhere.